Development depends on a complex set of pressures and dynamics from economics, politics, and culture—to give a full picture is an impossible task. More modestly, this small symposium tries to shed light on three issues: the origins and evolution of development theories and their links to U.S. imperialist strategies; the case of resource funds and the tendency for developing countries to adopt economic measures tailored for other regions; and the impact and limits of French policies in its former African colonies.
Irene Gendzier, author of the first article, points out that scholars outside the mainstream denounced the exaggerated simplifications typical of mainstream development studies in the 1960s. Eventually, however, many of them lost interest in a systematic critique of those dominant theories. She argues that was a mistake and that it is important to continue to watch critically their evolution in parallel to that of the strategies of capitalist countries, and above all the United States, for the control of the Third World. The embeddedness of social sciences to the imperialistic project of the United States became strongest after World War II. A large stream of social science literature that emerged from the 1950s to the 1970s supported the “modernization” of Third World economies. Its teleological view of history provided the justification for the repression of movements professing national autonomy and democratic self-determination. In the following period, from the 1990s onwards, the narrative switched to one that justified military and intelligence actions to export democracy. The latter is seen as an intrinsically peaceful regime, whose diffusion would guarantee global stability. At the same time, behavioral studies enjoy an unprecedented fortune, being critical to unconventional, psychological warfare. In both phases, the role of U.S. government, army, and private foundations has proven crucial.
The article by Olawoye Salewa addresses one specific case of policy practice based on bad theory: resource funds. Those funds, adopted by many African countries today, collect revenues from the sale of natural resources and acquire assets in international financial markets. Studies that support their adoption often refer to the successful experience of Norway in the period following the Second World War. Norway is a country rich in oil and, as a developing country at the time, it shared the financial problem that African countries face: the need to make wise and forward-looking investments to smooth fluctuating revenues from natural resources. But Olawoye points out that Norway adopted two different investment strategies over time: Before the 1990s revenues were reinvested internally in physical capital, infrastructures, and welfare; from the 1990s, when the country was fully developed, the fund was financialized and invested mostly abroad. In accordance with the suggestions of international organizations, the model followed by African countries today is the latter one, which is not appropriate to stimulate development and growth of productive capacity in poor countries. In fact, the revenues are subtracted from productive use in the country and invested elsewhere, with austerity-like effects on the national economy.
Finally, the article by Douglas Yates takes on the case of Francophone Africa and the complex set of strategies that accompany the French hegemony in the area: the school system; administrative and legal traditions; and a net of bilateral cooperation accords regarding aid, culture, natural resources, finance, and security. The colonial and postcolonial system alike guaranteed the reproduction of sectoral economies that benefitted specific industries and family empires. But the relationship between France and its former colonies goes beyond the economic interests and involves the very definition of its national identity. The economic and political elites together defined the “African policy” in ways that made the former colonies dependent and locked in. But this “imperial overstretch” reveals also a reversed dependency: France needs Africa to build and validate the idea of its grandeur. According to Yates, the pervasiveness of the French effort to control the region has failed strategically. With no interest in a virtuous and productive integration of the two economies, France focused on satisfying the needs of a small lobby, adopting mere predatory policies. But it also grew incapable of fending off old and new economic powers such as the United States, Germany, India, and China that have become the principal trading partners.